


Holler You Home

by audreycritter



Series: Hug Prompts [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, all the hugs they are my life now, batdad and butlerdad, recovery fic, tw: injury, tw: past violence, wibbly-wobbly canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 12:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14832561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Bruce also hadn’t spoken about the condition of the bodies he’d found in the sewer but that wasn’t unusual, for him to avoid it. Alfred didn’t yet know if this meant it was too horrific to verbalize or merely the sort of gore that faded into all the other gore Gotham routinely offered.It had been something of a month.It frequently was.hug prompt 14: couch cuddling





	Holler You Home

**Author's Note:**

> title, as almost always, from falling up. 
> 
> "home"  
>  _When you have lost your way out in the shadows_  
>  There are no ways too dark for me always
> 
>  
> 
> _When you have grown more than I can hold you_  
>  When you have leapt beyond this place  
> Maybe you’ll never again recognize me  
> But my voice will be the same always

The television played at a low volume, loud enough in the quiet room. The only sign that Bruce was engaging with the BBC comedy, much less enjoying it, was just a small smiling tugging one corner of his mouth upward.

Alfred didn’t regularly do domestic tasks like ironing in the den but he’d made an exception today, to keep Bruce company while he recovered from a nasty infection. An encounter with Killer Croc had meant gashes clean through the armor, and being thrown in sewer water. The bruises and the bacteria had seeped in together, spreading from the lacerations to everything else.

As far as recoveries went, it had been a relatively mild one so far. The usual sutures and medications and fevers, but by day four the worst of it was over and Alfred only hoped Bruce would rest for the remainder of the week. He was moving stiffly enough to warrant it, but he often didn’t listen to his own body on such matters.

Bruce also hadn’t spoken about the condition of the bodies he’d found in the sewer but that wasn’t unusual, for him to avoid it. Alfred didn’t yet know if this meant it was too horrific to verbalize or merely the sort of gore that faded into all the other gore Gotham routinely offered.

It had been something of a month.

It frequently was.

Alfred clipped a hanger onto the last pair of slacks he had to press and turned off the iron. He wound the cord into a neat figure eight, and turned to go place it on its stand in the laundry room to cool.

“Al,” Bruce’s voice cracked hoarsely, as if his throat were dry and his tongue caught off guard. He cleared his throat. “Al, would you—”

Alfred paused in the doorway, looking back at the head of tousled black hair still resolutely pointed toward the television.

“Never mind,” Bruce said hollowly, as if his mind were somewhere else.

From the doorway, Alfred studied the messy hair. It stuck up on one side, uncombed and mussed from a recent nap pressed against a couch cushion. He thought of the long rows of stitches he’d put in Bruce’s side, over the scars already there. If the lacerations had been an inch deeper, two inches, three— he wouldn’t have had a boy to stitch up at all.

Those scant inches would have spilled vital life out into sewer sludge, where police hadn’t even found or retrieved the victims that had been dragged there before.

There were days when Alfred grew so numb to danger by the sheer constancy of its presence, that it was like the feigned invulnerability to fatal errors that had carried him through his days in Hungary and Turkey and Brazil on SAS missions. The illusion made the work possible, bearable, until a bullet whizzing with stinging heat nearly nicked his ear off or a glass of wine with acid tipped to the floor and ate the carpet at his feet.

In earlier days it had been his life and now it was Bruce’s, the intake of breath and the shaky laugh out and the  _that was bloody close_. There wasn’t any other way to cope with that kind of thing.

Moments of contemplation were risky because they gave one time to tally all the things at stake.

Like a son sliced through in a sewer, staring at an unforgiving black coffin of underground roof, while nobody came to administer last rites or offer rescue.

He set the iron back down on the board and rounded the couch. The spark of relief in Bruce’s eyes confirmed his hunch: the foolish boy had wanted him to stay and still couldn’t ask, though he had to know Alfred wouldn’t ever refuse him  _that_.

The show was playing from a disc, reruns watched a half-dozen times. Bruce was slouched back, one side held a little rigidly.

Alfred held his arm out, an invitation. Bruce regarded it with a careful sweep of his gaze and then leaned. Alfred tightened his arm to give a firm embrace and then left it draped there while Bruce, with a soft sigh, settled his head against Alfred’s shoulder.

It called to mind times when he was younger, when they’d sit and watch things to interrupt the nightmarish haze of a long night or far too early morning. Bruce rarely initiated but even more rarely refused affection in those days, and Alfred wondered with a small start what had changed. Had Bruce begun avoiding it more? Had Alfred stopped pausing to sit with him?

Perhaps it was a bit of both.

Alfred chided himself for any part he played in it, and watched the familiar story unfold on the screen while his cheek rested against the unkempt hair.

The shirt sleeve under his fingers was soft— for such a hard man, Bruce gravitated toward such soft clothing, and the softest yet were the things worn with a hundred washings. The old shirts with faded logos and spackled brown blood stains were ones Bruce resolutely kept plucking out of the rubbish and stubbornly putting back in with the laundry whenever Alfred had tried to get rid of them, until he’d given up.

Let him have his small comforts, however insufficient Alfred felt them, he’d finally decided.

The arm beneath the sleeve was like granite, dense with muscle and crooked, ridged scars. This one was burns and blades and an errant grapple line. It was the other arm, the one folded and tucked between their sides, that was marred by gunshot and teeth; a match for the new ones curved around chest and belly.

Alfred knew them all because he had tended nearly every single one. The arm, along with being scarred, was also slightly warm with lingering low fever. There was slight muscle tremor along that side of Bruce’s body, rippling under shirt and skin. Alfred turned his head just slightly toward it, the question on his lips. Bruce answered before he spoke.

“Just sore,” he huffed, tiredly. “M’fine.”

Some battles were not worth picking, not when they would intrude on other victories. Alfred left off the suggestion of medication for later. For now, he hoped this was balm enough.

Bruce’s chest rumbled with a brief cough of a laugh in reaction to something on the screen. Alfred hadn’t been paying attention, but he recognized the tail end of the gag when he looked. It drew a chuckle from him, as well; in part because he’d always found this bit amusing and in part because it amused Bruce enough to provoke a reaction.

When the show moved on, Alfred found himself rubbing circles on Bruce’s arm, perhaps out of an instinctive desire to smooth out the muscle tremors. By the time the credits rolled, the tension had indeed faded into something slack and limp. Bruce was snoring gently, his head heavy on Alfred’s shoulder.

The remote was out of reach but the show was auto-playing the next episode, and even if it hadn’t, Alfred knew he would have sat for another hour or more in the room with a blank screen and curtain-muted sunlight while Bruce slept. Whatever he was putting off in the daily list of tasks was worth delaying for this, to stand sentry over slumber and feel the warm and living weight of a son who’d made it home again.


End file.
